The 9/11 truth movement is characterized by an increasingly credible veneer - largely thanks to the 9/11 scholars. As media attention builds to a deafening crescendo in anticipation of the fifth anniversary of the attacks, it is necessary to step back and distance ourselves from the more outlandish 9/11 theories and offset their damaging effects.

Over the course of the next week we will continue to take a critical and discerning look at the 9/11 truth movement, celebrating both its obvious measured progress while also highlighting areas of concern that need to be resolved before the next rung on the ladder to bringing criminal charges against the guilty parties can be climbed.

Our sole purpose in this piece is to weed out and discredit an element of 9/11 embraced by 'conspiracy theorists' as oppose to 'skeptics' of the official story. We will treat conspiracy theories that are as implausible or more so than the government version, which in itself a conspiracy theory, with the same contempt - because they are harmful to the 9/11 truth movement as a whole.

It is not the intention of this article to create in-fighting or bickering nor is it advantageous to attack anyone's character and that is why we refrain from citing any individuals by name. Many speculative tenets of what happened on 9/11 have been courted - including by this author - and then dropped after the evidence evaporates and common sense kicks in. We should be loathe to jettison reason and logic even in times of unparalleled absurdity.

Advocates of the 'blue screen' or 'hologram' theory hold that the planes that hit the World Trade Center, or at least Flight 175, were ghost aircraft and that sophisticated image projection technology was used to fake the illusion of them entering the towers.

The evidence they present to validate this notion is the contention that Flight 175 should have "bounced off" the tower yet sliced through it like a knife through butter.

The vast majority of the evidence is supported not by scientific analysis of what one would expect to happen when a large commercial airliner impacts a skyscraper at over 500 miles per hour, but with grainy Internet videos and hastily interpreted statements made by news reporters at ground zero.

If we are to believe, and the evidence suggests it to be so, that western intelligence agencies are carrying out acts of terror, to go to such lengths mandates the necessity of multi-layered fallback options if the criminals are caught red-handed. This is why a large scale terror attack is always shadowed by an almost identical government drill, as was the case with 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings. If significant and damning evidence were to be presented in a court of law powerful enough to have any impact that implicated high officials in acts of gross treason - the fallback option that it was "just part of the drill," remains as a last chance saloon.

If we are to consider that some form of high-tech hologram technology was utilized as part of a David Copperfield style sound and lights magic show that only made it appear as if Flight 175 had hit the south tower - then we are seriously entertaining the notion that the criminals who ran the attack did not bother to construct any fallback explanation if this massive public stunt had gone wrong.

What if the bombs inside the tower had failed due to faulty wiring or had only detonated a second after the hologram had been sent into the tower? How could that one be explained away? Who in their right mind would make such a huge gamble with no fallback option?

There is one video that soundly debunks the blue screen theories and should be used to put this deception to bed for good. Japanese news footage of Flight 175 striking the south tower shows the fuselage of the aircraft briefly exiting the opposite face of the building before the entire plane is engulfed in flames from the exploding jet fuel (located well behind the nosecone). Watch the clip below.

To maintain that this was a hologram necessitates that the "ghost plane" was also somehow superimposed inside the tower so it could be seen exiting at the exact right moment. This is a ridiculous concept.

Here is a close-up frame of the nose exiting the tower.

Here is debris from the fuselage of Flight 175 at ground zero.

I could spend hours attempting to dismiss the multitude of claims made by blue screen advocates but I don't doubt that for every point I make they could uncover another grainy video or edited piece of eyewitness testimony to counter my argument. This is why I can only try and appeal to reason and rational thinking.

If the criminals who organized and carried out 9/11 could execute the operation -

a) in a manner that would have more or less the same psychological impact they were trying to achieve even if the planes had missed their targets (which one of them did)

and

b) by using the most straightforward means available and minimizing the potential that the plot would fail (using giant holograms and attempting to hoodwink millions watching both on television and in person is not the most straightforward means)

Then they would choose those options.

A great deal of the hit pieces we have already encountered and several more that will undoubtedly emerge on or around the fifth anniversary on Monday excel in setting up straw man arguments, attributing minority fringe theories to the entire 9/11 truth movement and then using them to debunk the entire field. Popular Mechanics seized upon the no planes at the WTC theory and dishonestly exhaulted it as a core argument of the 9/11 truth movement.

Therefore it is our remit to distance ourselves from completely unsubstantiated theories which have the effect of eclipsing proven holes in the official story. The hologram theory is severely damaging to the credibility that the 9/11 truth movement has fought so hard to obtain and should therefore be sidelined and shunned at all costs.